Loading application data

[Joel Sherrill]

On 03/10/2010 11:59 AM, Eric Norum wrote:
> I do this for my standalone EPICS applications by concatenating the tar file at the end of the bootstrap flash.  I then set up the IMFS with the tar image during my application startup with the following code.  The salient routine is rtems_tarfs_load.    You'll have to figure out some way of determining the value of the tar image in memory, but once you can do that rtems_tarfs_load() takes care of the rest.
>
>    
The network-demos httpd does this.  It is fairly straightforward.

--joel
> static int
> initialize_local_filesystem(char **argv)
> {
>      extern char _DownloadLocation[] __attribute__((weak));
>      extern char _FlashBase[] __attribute__((weak));
>      extern char _FlashSize[]  __attribute__((weak));
>
>      if (_FlashSize&&  (_DownloadLocation || _FlashBase)) {
>          extern char _edata[];
>          size_t flashIndex = _edata - _DownloadLocation;
>          char *header = _FlashBase + flashIndex;
>
>          if (memcmp(header + 257, "ustar  ", 8) == 0) {
>              int fd;
>              printf ("***** Unpack in-memory file system (IMFS) *****\n");
>              if (rtems_tarfs_load("/", (unsigned char *)header, (size_t)_FlashSize - flashIndex) != 0) {
>                  printf("Can't unpack tar filesystem\n");
>                  return 0;
>              }
>     .........do whatever you want with the IMFS at this point.........
>          }
>      }
>      return 0;
> }
>
> On Mar 10, 2010, at 9:39 AM, Gedare Bloom wrote:
>
>    
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm trying to figure out what is the most portable (with respect to
>> BSP) way to get file-based data in to an application.  I can't use
>> network or ATA-type disk drive.  I've had some thoughts, and was
>> hoping someone might have faced this type of problem before me.  My
>> motivation is to do benchmarking of RTEMS systems with respect to
>> compute and memory usage. My particular board does not support hard
>> drive or network I/O -- and in general I would like to have a portable
>> set of benchmarks that any other RTEMS user can use.  Most of the
>> benchmarks that I'm looking at use file i/o to get parameters for
>> execution.
>>
>> I was looking at the various filesystems, and was intrigued by the
>> IMFS, The Wiki says the following: "After an application restart you
>> will need to construct its contents. RTEMS provides some supporting
>> calls for this plus there is the ability to tar files into it." What
>> is that bit about the ability to tar files into it? Does this require
>> network support?
>>
>> I could try to use a RAM disk and somehow interface that with an RTEMS
>> filesystem. Is there any support for this in RTEMS?  Any idea how I
>> would get RTEMS to know where to find the RAM disk?
>>
>> My last option is to convert the files that I have in to arrays of
>> data (compressed binary/hex or ascii strings) that are stored as part
>> of the application. This would definitely be the most portable way to
>> get the data in to applications, but involves a bit of work
>> translating the files to something usable by the application.
>>
>> Maybe someone has done something similar -- I really just need a good,
>> portable way to get application data in to RTEMS. Although the data is
>> currently organized in Unix files, if there are some tools to convert
>> files in to some other format that makes it easy to place in memory
>> alongside the RTEMS application, it would probably satisfy my
>> constraints.
>>
>> Also, if anyone else is interested in such a set of benchmarks, let me
>> know and I can keep you appraised of my progress.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Gedare
>> _______________________________________________
>> rtems-users mailing list
>> rtems-users at rtems.org
>> http://www.rtems.org/mailman/listinfo/rtems-users
>>      
>    


-- 
Joel Sherrill, Ph.D.             Director of Research&  Development
joel.sherrill at OARcorp.com        On-Line Applications Research
Ask me about RTEMS: a free RTOS  Huntsville AL 35805
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